For all the scholarship devoted to Mary Shelley's English novel Frankenstein, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to its role in American culture, and virtually none to its racial resonances in the United States. In Black Frankenstein, Elizabeth Young identifies and interprets the figure of a black American Frankenstein monster as it appears with surprising frequency throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture, in fiction, film, essays, oratory, painting, and other media, and in works by both whites and African Americans. Black Frankenstein stories, Young argues, effect four kinds of racial critique: they humanize the slave; they explain, if not justify, black violence; they condemn the slaveowner; and they expose the instability of white power. The black Frankenstein's monster has served as a powerful metaphor for reinforcing racial hierarchy—and as an even more powerful metaphor for shaping anti-racist critique. Illuminating the power of parody and reappropriation, Black Frankenstein tells the story of a metaphor that continues to matter to literature, culture, aesthetics, and politics.

Indianola, founded in 1849, is the county seat of Warren County, Iowa. It is located 12 miles south of Iowa’s capital, Des Moines, at the intersection of U.S. highways 65 and 69 and state highway 92. The city is home of the National Balloon Museum, begun in 1972; the National Balloon Classic, an annual nine-day balloon rally; the Balloon Federation of America’s national office; Simpson College; the Des Moines Metro Opera, a widely acclaimed summer opera festival; and is host to the Iowa Wine Festival each summer. This book focuses on the history of ballooning in Indianola, which hosted the U.S. National Hot Air Balloon Championships from 1970 to 1988, and the National Balloon Classic from 1989 to the present. This is the story of how Indianola became the ballooning capital of Iowa.

No mortal has ever sailed to the end of the world and returned to tell the tale. Legend says that the southern seas are full of monsters, lethal storms, and monstrous entities even the gods cannot conceive. Only a brave hero or a reckless fool would ever willingly venture into these deadly waters. Prince Tojas Malock travels to the southern seas in response to the summons from a goddess he has never met. To conquer these seas, Malock recruits the finest crew money can buy: An intelligent but haughty mage, an old fisherman with a mysterious past, a young female assassin, and a woman who knows far more than she lets on. With his ragtag crew of sailors behind him, Malock heads to the end of the world, ready for whatever the seas have to throw at him. But with mortal-eating gods, murderous pirates, and a traitor within the crew itself, Malock's voyage may end in tragedy. KEYWORDS: epic fantasy adventure series, epic fantasy dragons, epic fantasy magic, epic fantasy sword and sorcery, sword and sorcery adult fantasy, sword and sorcery series, sword and sorcery series magic